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Name:
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Dates:
Born: October 16, 1898 in Maine, Minnesota
Died: January 19, 1980 in Washington, D.C.
Confrimed to the Supreme Court: April 4, 1939
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: 1939-1975
Stroke: December 31, 1974
Biography:
William O. Douglas was known early on for his decisions which affected the
regulation of business, for example price fixing and bankruptcy laws. Later on,
however, he became better known for his position on civil liberties - although his
legacy on that score is somewhat mixed.
During World War II, he and other justices were caught between two competing interests, their desire to support the civil liberties of Americans and their desire to support the war effort of President Roosevelt, the man who appointed them to the Court. Sometimes, their decisions leaned towards the latter - for example the earliest case which upheld the constitutionality of forcing students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (Minersville v. Gobitis) or the laws which forced Japanese-Americans into intern camps.
Later, however, Douglas repented of some of those decisions - for example, he joined in West Virginia v. Barnette, which reversed Minersville. His most famous opinion on civil liberties is probably Girswold v. Connecticut, which established the idea that one of the fundamental premises of many of the rights outlined in the Constitution is that there exists a sphere of privacy for individuals which the state cannot easily intrude upon. This is also where his intellectual legacy as a Supreme Court Justice is most contested because many critics find that such a conclusion is poorly formulated and even more poorly based.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
